The Peridale Cafe Cozy Box Set 4

by Agatha Frost

  “What are you talking about?” Camila cried as she snatched up the pictures. “Nigel Bell didn’t find anything! Nigel followed him for six months and didn’t find a single thing! I used all my savings to make sure he loved me like he said he did. Tony was faithful to me! And Bev? I know nothing of this suicide note! I don’t even know where Bev lives! Where did you get these images? I have never seen these.”

  “Tony took them because he knew he was being followed. They were in Tony’s emails.”

  “What emails?” Camila cried, shaking the sheets. “Are you working for the police?”

  “No, I—”

  “Then how do you have access to Tony’s emails?” Camila stepped forward, her eyes turning manic. “What are you doing here, café lady?”

  “Tony was using his assistant’s laptop.”

  “What laptop?”

  “When Tony’s broke. He took Oliver’s. You got it back for him.”

  “None of this happened!” Camila screwed up the papers and tossed them at Julia. “You are a fantasist! Get out of my house!”

  “I—I don’t understand.” Julia shook her head. “It all points to you.”

  “I don’t understand!” Camila pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’m calling the police. You’re crazy! How dare you come here and say these things to me?”

  Camila hesitated before dialling the number, her eyes glued on Julia as though waiting for her to pounce. Julia looked out of her window at her car.

  “No,” she whispered to herself. “It can’t be.”

  “What can’t be?”

  “I need to make a call.” Julia stepped out of the view of the window and retrieved her own phone. “Camila, you can call the police all you want, but can you wait thirty seconds? I’m sorry for everything I said. All I ask is for thirty more seconds of your time.”

  “Thirty seconds.” Camila relaxed her arm and put the phone by her side. “I am counting.”

  Julia scrolled through her recent contacts and clicked the number of one of her oldest friends. She pressed the phone against her ear, and, as she expected, the person on the other end picked up almost immediately.

  “Johnny? It’s Julia.”

  “Oh, hi. I just got an invitation to your—”

  “I don’t have long, Johnny, just be quiet and listen.” Julia inhaled. “What do you know about your cousin, Oliver?”

  “I told you, I don’t really—”

  “I know, you don’t know him, but you must know something.” Julia clenched her eyes shut. “Think Johnny. This is important.”

  “Julia, I don’t know what to say. My mum wasn’t close to my Auntie Judith. I didn’t even know she—”

  “Auntie Judith?” Julia’s eyes sprung open. “As in, Judy?”

  “She hates being called that.”

  “Who’s Oliver’s dad?”

  “No idea. If you’d let me finish, I didn’t even know my mum had a sister until about fifteen years ago. They hated each other. Julia, what’s going on?”

  “Johnny, I’ll explain later. Thank you.”

  She hung up and clutched her phone against her chin as she stared into space. After ten seconds of putting the correct pieces together, Julia looked up at Camila, who seemed more confused than ever.

  “Please, forgive me.” Julia grabbed her hands. “I said some awful things. I was wrong.”

  “What is happening?”

  “What did you know about Tony’s first wife?”

  “Judy?” Camila frowned. “He said she was a horrid woman. She was pregnant, but she lost the baby because—”

  “Did Tony say he was there when Judy lost the baby?”

  Camila thought for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think so. He said he came home one day to a note telling him what had happened. He never saw her again.”

  “Not even during the divorce?” Julia pushed. “What about in court?”

  “She didn’t show up, and Tony was the one who filed, so the judge granted the divorce without her being there. Julia, what does any of this have to do with Tony’s death?”

  “I don’t think Judy lost that baby.” Julia’s heart throbbed in her throat at saying the crazy theory out loud. “I think she wanted to get Tony out of her life, so she told him something unforgivable and then vanished.”

  “Where is this baby?” Camila cried, tears filling her eyes. “You’re saying Tony lives on in a child?”

  “Oh, Camila, don’t get too excited.” Julia passed her a tissue from her handbag. “I think you’ve already spent a year with the child, and it was long enough for him to realise he hated Tony enough to kill him.”

  “Who?” Camila shrieked. “What child? Tell me!”

  “Oliver.” The name almost jammed in Julia’s throat. “Tony’s assistant.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “Call the police,” Julia called as she ran into the hall. “I need to talk to him.”

  Julia opened the door and steadied herself the best she could. She walked to her car, staring at Oliver through the windows. He had both hands in his hoodie pocket, and he was staring off into space as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Julia knocked on the window, making him jump.

  She opened the car door and climbed in, sure he could hear her heart pounding.

  “What happened?” Oliver asked. “Did she confess?”

  “No,” Julia shook her head. “But don’t worry. I know she’s lying. I tied her up and called the police myself. They shouldn’t be far off.”

  “Are you okay?” Oliver asked. “You look like you’re—”

  “Who’s your father, Oliver?” Julia interrupted, turning to face the teenage boy. “I need to know.”

  Oliver stared back, his brows tilted as though he had just heard some terrible news. It was that expression that had made Julia trust him without question. He had reminded her so much of Jessie, but Jessie’s expression had never dropped as readily as Oliver’s did. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, and, with them, a large knife, no doubt snatched from Addie’s kitchen.

  “Drive,” he said coldly, resting the knife against her neck.

  “Where to?” Julia asked as she turned the key in the ignition.

  “I’ll direct you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Oliver eventually lowered the knife from Julia’s throat, but he kept it pointed at her under the dashboard and out of view of other drivers. When they first left Camila’s home in Riverswick, they passed two police cars, and even though Julia begged them with her eyes to understand what was going on, none of the officers made eye contact. She did the same thing to every car that passed until it grew too dark to see any faces behind the dazzling headlights.

  Julia’s phone rang off the hook for the first ten minutes until Oliver snapped at her to switch it off. She did as Barker showed her with the side button and put it on silent, but before she could even think about sending any messages, Oliver seized it and tossed it into the back.

  For what felt like hours, Oliver directed Julia with a calm and firm voice. With each turn down never-ending, winding roads, she felt like Oliver had no idea where he was going until she realised they were heading deeper and deeper into the countryside and away from civilisation. It crossed Julia’s mind that Oliver might be driving her to her death, but if he had wanted to kill her, he could have done it any number of ways since leaving Riverswick. He was taking her somewhere, and even though neither of them had said anything other than asking for and giving directions, the silence in the air said enough; the police were looking for them, and they both knew it.

  With Oliver’s knife still pointed at her, Julia stole a glance at the clock on the dashboard. It read 7:13pm, but she’d meant to put it back since daylight savings in October, so it was really 6:13pm. She felt silly for thinking about it, but Dot’s party would be starting in less than twenty minutes. Despite her complaints yesterday, she would have given anything to be caged up in her maid’s costume instead of driving
into oblivion.

  “Pull up by that wall,” Oliver ordered, pointing the knife at a stone wall at the end of the lane. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  Was he putting distance between them and the car? Did he think Julia would have a chance of escaping wherever they were going? Was he tricking whoever eventually found the car so they wouldn’t find her body easily? Knowing all were possible, she parked where instructed and twisted the keys in the ignition.

  “Get out,” he ordered. “Leave the keys in here. Don’t try to run. I will be able to catch you.”

  Julia didn’t doubt it. She tossed her keys into the footwell and climbed out. To her surprise, Oliver didn’t tell her to leave her handbag, so she left it slung over her shoulder. She expected him to notice it immediately when they met around the front of the car, but he didn’t seem able to look at her.

  “Walk,” he ordered, jerking the knife towards a narrow passage in the wall. “I’ll direct you.”

  With only the light of the moon to guide her, Julia walked forward, feeling for a hardly used path under her feet. She didn’t dare look around, but there was nothing ahead of her for miles. No lights, no sound, no one to hear her screams but the motionless trees.

  They walked for so long that Julia’s feet began to hurt. She didn’t dare ask where they were going in case her voice startled Oliver; she was very aware of the blade behind her. Just when Julia was beginning to accept that Oliver was walking her into the middle of nowhere to hide her body, the outline of a structure came into view. It was nothing more than a manmade shadow in the sea of natural silhouettes at first, but the closer they got, she realised it was a farmhouse, and they were walking towards it.

  Any hope of Julia being rescued by the inhabitants was quickly dashed because there weren’t any. While the structure was large and still mostly intact, it was obvious no one had lived there for a long time. Most of the windows had been smashed, and the front door was missing. Nature had long since started reclaiming the space.

  “Inside,” he ordered. “Go straight ahead into the kitchen.”

  Julia did as she was told. To her surprise, Oliver finally lowered the knife and vanished into another room, giving Julia enough time to reach into her bag and tuck the flashlight up her sleeve. It was nothing compared to the knife, but it was something. She heard some rummaging before Oliver returned less than thirty seconds later carrying two giant duffel bags. He dumped them on the kitchen table next to Julia, sending up a cloud of dust into the dark.

  Tucking his knife into his hoodie pocket, Oliver picked up the edge of a blanket covering something in the corner. A flurry of thick dust filled the air, clearing to reveal an old rusty motorbike.

  “You’re prepared,” Julia said, feeling braver without the knife pointing at her. “You planned all this out.”

  “I didn’t plan for you to find out like you did.” Oliver cast an eye at Julia, but his attention was occupied by the bike. “I’d hoped to be long gone before anyone got close to pointing the finger at me, but I knew I couldn’t leave until someone was charged. I didn’t intend for you to find Bev. She was supposed to be found in a couple weeks’ time when the neighbours started noticing the smell. By then, interest would have died down, and I would have been long gone. The suicide note would have closed the case.”

  “And just in case they didn’t believe that, you wrote the letter as though you were Camila pretending to be Bev,” Julia added. “My precious Tony.”

  “Of course, you spotted that.” Oliver let out a chuckle. “You really are quite brilliant, Julia. Although, not that brilliant. You didn’t realise you were being manipulated. You’re too trusting. I realised that from the moment you tried to give me that coffee in the tent. I was trying my best to be the fragile assistant who blended into the walls, but you noticed me right away and wanted to give me my moment. I appreciated that. Who knows, in another life I could have been your Jessie.”

  “Who knows,” Julia said.

  Oliver stopped fiddling with the bike. He climbed on and started it. It took a couple of attempts, but the old engine roared. Satisfied with his work, he turned it off and climbed down.

  “She told me all about everything you’ve done for her when she drove me home,” Oliver called over his shoulder. “You really are quite special.”

  “It didn’t have to be this way,” Julia said, her heart breaking. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Oh, I did.” Oliver walked to the bags on the table and rifled through them. “I have enough food and money to survive in the wild until I figure out something more long-term.” He zipped the bags up and looked Julia right in the eye. “You’re dying to know why, aren’t you? I can tell. Take a seat, and I’ll explain. It won’t make much difference in the long run.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No.” Oliver shook his head. “But I can’t let you live. I have a plan for you. You’ll suffer, and I’m sorry for that, but it’s the only way. If I let you go, you’ll lead them here, and it’ll be a starting point for them. It’s more than they have right now. Doesn’t it feel great to be so off the grid that no one has a clue we’re here?” Oliver pulled out two chairs from the old table and motioned for Julia to sit. “I’ll explain everything. Think of it as my way of apologising. I really do like you, Julia.”

  Not wanting to disobey, Julia sat down, clinging the flashlight tight against her sleeve with the ends of her fingers; all she needed was one moment.

  “Where to start?” Oliver drummed his fingers on the table. “How about my mother? Judy Bridges, or Judith Smith, as she eventually went by. I grew up with the world’s worst mother, and I had no idea who my father was. All of that was true. She would leave me for weeks, months, years on end, and she’d run off to God knows where doing God knows what. Drugs? Men? Hiding? I didn’t know, I just know she wasn’t there, and the times she was, she was so drunk I wished she wasn’t.”

  Oliver inhaled and ran his fingers down his face, his eyes wide.

  “She showed up on my sixteenth birthday. Drunk, of course. I hadn’t seen her for a year. I’d been staying with one of my school teachers. Can you imagine that? I was so pathetic, a teacher took me in and looked after me because my mother didn’t want to. We were having a birthday dinner, and she turned up. She had a habit of knowing where I was, and she could always pick the perfect moment to come back and ruin things. Whenever I started to feel settled or somewhere close to happy, she’d crash in and ruin everything. That’s when she told me about my father.”

  “Tony Bridges.”

  “She yelled ‘You have a famous daddy!’, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. I didn’t believe her until she grabbed my laptop and typed in their names. Tony and Judy, the darlings of lunchtime news, until they were fired. For the first time in sixteen years, I had some hope. I knew I’d never have a mother, but I had a father out there.”

  “So, you came and found him?”

  “Not right away.” Oliver shook his head. “I was scared. I started listening to his radio show every afternoon. I thought he was so nice. I fantasised about the life we would have together. It was going to be perfect. I packed all my things in my bag, and I went to Riverswick to find him. It wasn’t difficult. He lived there, he recorded the show there. I watched him for months while I slept rough. The longer I left it, the harder it became to approach him. He didn’t know I existed. How could I drop into his life like that? I needed to make him like me first.”

  “But that never happened.”

  “It should have happened, but it didn’t.” Oliver sighed and rubbed his temples. “I was following him around a supermarket. I did that quite often. Blending in was easy. People would go up to him for pictures and autographs all the time. I was just another kid in the shop—until I overheard him on the phone. He was telling someone that Camila had quit being his assistant. I knew that she was his wife, and I knew it was my chance. I went to the library every day and used the free
computers to stalk the radio website for the job advert. It took weeks, but, finally, it popped up. I had everything ready to apply, so I know I was the first. I just needed to get an interview. I knew he’d hire me. How could he not? I was his son!”

  Oliver leaned back in the chair, his eyes glazing over as he circled his finger around in the dust.

  “Tony was awful to me from that first interview,” he continued. “I thought once he warmed to me, he’d become the Tony I knew from the radio. That guy was my dad, the other one was someone else. The harder I tried, the more he pushed me away, and the harder it became to tell him the truth. I burrowed deeper and deeper into his life, thinking I could find something I could use to make us connect. I hacked his emails, tracked his online searches, I even bugged his phone. I’d work twelve, sometimes fourteen hours for him, and then I’d go home and go over everything, hoping for a shred of anything I could use. Some common ground to start a real conversation.”

  “And did that happen?”

  “Never.” Oliver’s eyes darkened. “I learned what I’d been trying to ignore. He was a cruel, nasty loser. I stopped wanting him to like me. I wanted him to hate me. He was just as bad as my mother, but at least she had the decency to ruin my life only periodically. Tony was doing it every day, all day. When I saw that he was searching online to see how far he could push his allergy, I knew I had my chance. All I’d have to do was hide the EpiPen. It would have been so easy, but the night before the bake-off, Camila convinced Tony not to go through with it. I found the peanut oil in the bin the next day at the radio station. I knew what I had to do. When Tony left to change his shirt after that woman threw coffee on him, I poured the whole thing onto Bev’s pre-cut slice, and then I brought him a fresh shirt. It was too easy. Everyone was flapping around panicking about Tony and the coffee. I worried about the EpiPen because Tony always carried it in his pocket, but I don’t think Camila trusted him that morning, so she put it in her bag. All I had to do was bend over, push it up my sleeve, and hide it somewhere. It played out exactly as I expected. Well, I didn’t expect to be caught, but I planned for it all the same. I didn’t expect to have someone like you leading the police in all the right directions. When you turned up at Addie’s flat, I knew you had to be dealt with.”